50 CENT More so than any other music since the blues, hip-hop is all about stories. And its stories are both criminal minded and grand, making them enthralling and unbelievable, but also making them only as interesting and convincing as the teller. That's why, despite being blackballed by the industry, without a major-label recording contract, heads still gravitated to Jamaica, Queens' realest son, 50 Cent, like the planets to the sun. 50 Cent, born Curtis Jackson 26 years ago, is the real deal, the genuine article. He's a man of the streets, intimately familiar with its codes and its violence, but still, 50, an incredibly intelligent and deliberate man, holds himself with a regal air as if above the pettiness which surrounds him. Couple his true-life hardship with his knack for addictive, syrupy hooks, it's clear that 50 has exactly what it takes to ride down the road to riches and diamond rings. 50 is real, so he does real things. Born into a notorious Queens drug dynasty during the late '70s, 50 Cent lost those closest to him at an early age. Raised without a father, 50's mother, whose name carried weight in the street (hint, hint, dummies), was found dead under mysterious circumstances before he could hit his teens. The orphaned youth was taken in by his grandparents, who provided for 50. But his desire for things would drive him to the block. Which in his case was the infamous New York Avenue, now known as Guy R. Brewer Blvd. There, 50 stepped up to get his rep up, amassing a small fortune and a lengthy rap sheet. But the birth of his son put things in perspective for the post adolescent, and 50 began to pursue rap seriously. He signed with JMJ, the label of Run DMC DJ Jam Master Jay and began learning his trade. JMJ would teach the young buck to count bars and structure songs. Unfortunately, caught up in industry limbo, there wasn't much JMJ could do for 50. The platinum hitmakers Trackmasters took notice of 50 and signed him to Columbia Records in 1999. They shipped 50 to Upstate NY where they locked him up in the studio for 2 1/2 weeks. He turned out 36 songs in this short period, which resulted in "Power Of A Dollar," an unreleased masterpiece that Blaze Magazine judged a classic. 50's stick up kid anthem "How to Rob" blew through the roof and playfully painted him as a deliriously hungry up-and-comer daydreaming of robbing famous rappers. But 50 and the fans were the only ones laughing. Unable to take a joke, Jay-Z, Big Pun, Sticky Fingaz, and Ghostface Killah all replied to the song. "It wasn't personal. It was comedy based on truth, which made it so funny," says 50 Cent. In April of '00, 50 was shot 9 times, including a .9mm bullet to the face, in front of his grandmothers house in Queens. He spent the next few months in recovery while Columbia Records dropped him from the label. 50 didn't fold, he flew. Right into the zone. He banged out track after track, despite no income or backing, with his new business partner and friend Sha Money XL. The two recorded over 30 songs, strictly for mix-tapes, with the soul purpose of building a buzz. 50's street value rose and by the end of the spring of '01 he'd released the new material independently on the makeshift LP, "Guess Who's Back?". Beginning to attract interest, and now backed by his crew, G-Unit, 50 stayed on his grind and made more songs. But it was different this time. Rather than create new songs as they had before, 50 decided to showcase his hit-making ability by retouching first-class beats which had already been used. They released the red, white and blue bootleg, "50 Cent Is the Future," revisiting material by Jay-Z and even Rapheal Saadiq. That's when the unbelievable happened, and hip-hop history was written. The energetic CD caught the ear of supa MC Eminem, and within a week Em was on the radio saying, '50 Cent is my favorite rapper right now.' Em looked to mentor Dr. Dre to confirm his belief in the young hitmaker, and the good doctor co-signed. Floored by the appreciation of the greats, 50 didn't hesitate in signing with the dream team. In the wake of his acquisition, 50 Cent has become the most sought after newcomer in almost a decade. Not since the summer of '94, when radio would play absolutely anything Notorious B.I.G. related, has hip-hop seen buzz like this. Ever the clever businessman, 50 didn't let the opportunity escape him and quickly released another bootleg of borrowed beats, "No Mercy, No Fear." The CD featured only one new track, "Wanksta," which was certainly not intended for radio, but the streets couldn't wait for the official single and within weeks "Wanksta" became New York's most requested record. Thankfully, the stellar cut has found a home on the multi-platinum soundtrack to Eminem's smash movie, "8 Mile." With several huge hits already under his belt, 50 Cent is poised to be the artist to beat next year. He's coming with over ten incredible tracks stashed from last spring and newly recorded winners courtesy of Eminem, who's really cut his production teeth of late, and hip-hop's greatest, highest-selling producer Dr. Dre. "Creatively, what more could I ask for?" he asks jokingly. "You know if me and Em is in the same room then it's gonna be a friendly competition, neither of us wanna let the other one down. And Dre??? C'mon." Promising an LP of the caliber of rap classics like "Illmatic," "Ready to Die," and "Reasonable Doubt," 50 Cent's debut promises to set the pace for hip-hop in coming years. The product of his unrelenting drive, talent and, frankly, his real-ness, 50's official first album promises to do for him just what it says. With his infectious flow and viciously funny I-don't-give-a-f*** personality, there is no doubt that 50 Cent will Get Rich or Die Trying. KANYE WEST With an invincible drive, ROC-A-FELLA's finest new family member Kanye West reveals how his pathway to an accomplished life, love, and success are critical to the glory of his victory. Kanye West, a 26-year old Chicago native is on his way to staking a solid claim as one of hip-hop's elite. He is the new sound, style and culture of today's hip-hop. Blessed with a creative passion set aside for a chosen few. The producer/rapper has a gift so powerfully instinctive that it is as natural to him as the air he breathes. Kanye exudes this gift through his being and becomes it. This is the intensity for which he reveres his emotion for life; the people in his corner, and of course his music. He got his start back in the third grade when he discovered his passion, writing and rhyming. He progressed and began making beats when most kids were still playing hide and seek on the playground. His favorite past time became an occupational goal as a teenager when he came across NO I.D. a Chicago beat mastering producer who at the time produced an up in coming rapper who at the time went by the name Common Sense (now Common). This was a chance encounter that would become the pivotal opportunity to shape his future career in music. NO I.D. encouraged Kanye to sample from soulful old school hits and revive them with a new school flavor. In a MTV interview, Kanye explains, "NO I.D. told me 'you need to sample off records' when I found that out, it was all over." Kanye was signed to ROC-A-FELLA in 2002; the reality of a fathomable vision finally came in to view. Several big name labels had courted him at the time including Cash Money Millionaires, but the “R-O-C" had the stepping-stone he was looking for. Rather than his wildest dream come true, Kanye saw this as a calculated step to achieve the goals he had implemented for himself. "I am always confident in myself that what I put my all in, I could do it", he tells the MTV reporter. This is also the unwavering confidence he fiercely brings in to the ring to fight for an MC heavyweight title. This direction was put on the backburner for while but he always intended to step in the studio as an artist once his career as a producer took off. His focus is to establish himself as a dynamic one man, bringing the rhymes and the rhythm with innovation and originality. In addition to his highly anticipated album, “The College Dropout”, West is currently in the studio producing tracks for Twista, Donell Jones, Beanie Siegel, Dead Prez, Ludacris and one of his most excited ventures, a project with Scarface. At this stage in the game Kanye West is taking everything in stride. With the support of his inner circle and his self derived ambition, he is geared up to learn his lessons and perfect his craft for the masses, proving that a kid named Kanye can make heads bounce from coast to coast. PETEY PABLO Rather than taking the underground route like most Southern rappers, Petey Pablo took the direct route into the rap game: he went straight to the top. Though few knew much about him, Pablo suddenly broke in late 2001, and not just in the South but from coast to coast -- MTV rotated his video and urban radio championed his debut single. That single, "Raise Up," took the U.S. by storm, breaking into Billboard's Top 30 pop singles and Top Ten R&B singles, not to mention the endless weeks of airplay. Before his debut album even streeted, he was a household name. Pablo's widespread success and commercial acceptance is perhaps most fascinating because the North Carolina native is anything but glamorous. Often shirtless and unadorned with jewelry and representing either the ghetto or the country, Pablo represented an earthier and more realistic embodiment of the stereotypical Southern black man. Pablo may have catapulted to stardom overnight, but he labored for years before getting his big break. Born in Greensville, NC, he eventually moved to New York when he became serious about breaking into the rap game. There, he managed to befriend such luminary figures as Busta Rhymes, Mystikal, and Black Rob. His recorded debut came on a remix of the latter's "Whoa!," which caught the attention of many, including Timbaland. Then, while at a club in New York, Jive's head of A&R happened to hear Pablo dropping some rhymes with Black Rob, and subsequently signed him to a contract. Jive then gave Pablo a chance to shine on Mystikal's Let's Get Ready album, while, around this same time, Missy Elliott introduced Pablo to Timbaland, who had been curious about the rapper ever since hearing him on the "Whoa!" remix. Jive made the collaboration happen, and the label found itself with a sure-fire debut single, "Raise Up." "Raise Up" first began getting airplay in late summer 2001, beginning in the South and spreading like a virus from there. It wasn't long before the video was all over MTV and the song was creeping up the Billboard charts. Eventually peaking at number 25 pop and number nine R&B, "Raise Up" remained on the charts for months and set the stage for Diary of a Sinner, Pablo's debut album. The album featured three Timbaland tracks as well as productions by Prophecy, Chucky Madness, Abnormal, and Pablo himself. Not surprisingly, it sold many, many copies, making Pablo another of the overnight superstars produced by the early-2000s Dirty South boom. But then not much came of Pablo. Diary of a Sinner failed to spawn a follow-up single of much magnitude, and Pablo made very few guest appearances. Jive scheduled his sophomore album for late 2002 but then pushed it back indefinitely. It wouldn't be until mid-2004 that Jive finally released Still Writing in My Diary: 2nd Entry, by which point a great many rap listeners had forgotten about Pablo. The album's lead single, "Freek-a-Leek," did its job well, however. Produced by the then red-hot Lil Jon, the sexually explicit song was successful in many ways: it returned Pablo to the upper reaches of the Billboard charts; garnered endless play on urban radio and music television; crossed over well to the female audience; became a club favorite overnight; and perked interest for the long-delayed Still Writing in My Diary. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide LUDACRIS Ludacris rode the early-2000s Dirty South explosion to widespread popularity, as his songs enjoyed an enormous embrace, mainly by urban media outlets but also MTV and pop radio. The Atlanta-based rapper went from local sensation to household name after Def Jam signed him to its Def Jam South subsidiary in 2000. In addition to connecting him with super-producers like Timbaland, the Neptunes, and Organized Noize, Def Jam gave Ludacris remarkable marketing push. Ludacris thus quickly became one of the rap industry's most in-demand rappers, guesting on hits for everyone from Missy Elliott ("One Minute Man") to Jermaine Dupri ("Welcome to Atlanta") when he wasn't dominating the urban market with his own hits, most notably "What's Your Fantasy?," "Southern Hospitality," "Area Codes," and "Rollout (My Business)." Before he became the Dirty South's most successful rapper, Ludacris DJed at an Atlanta radio station. He used the opportunity to hone his craft on the mic, learn about the industry, and make a name for himself throughout the Atlanta area, which had become the South's rap mecca starting in the mid-'90s. Eventually, he began aspiring toward a career as a rapper rather than as a radio jock, and after working with Timbaland -- appearing on the super-producer's Tim's Bio album (the original version of "Fat Rabbit") in 1998 -- Ludacris began taking his rap career seriously. He recorded an album, Incognegro (2000), and released it on his independently released Disturbing tha Peace label. Ludacris primarily worked with producer Shondrae for the album, though also with Organized Noize to a lesser extent. Incognegro sold impressively in Atlanta, where Ludacris was well known for his radio work. Soon after Incognegro became the talk of Atlanta and "What's Your Fantasy?" became a regional hit, Scarface came knocking. Def Jam had given the veteran rapper the go-ahead to scout for talent in the South, since the Dirty South movement was gaining steam at the time and Def Jam wanted to start a Def Jam South subsidiary. Ludacris became Scarface's first signing, and Def Jam re-packaged the tracks from Incognegro, along with a few new productions: a U.G.K. collaboration ("Stick 'Em Up"), a Neptunes production ("Southern Hospitality"), and a remix of his previously released song with Timbaland (retitled "Phat Rabbit"). Def Jam then gave the resulting album, Back for the First Time (2000), substantial marketing push, choosing "What's Your Fantasy?" (an explicit duet about sexual fantasies from both the male and female perspective) as the first single. Though some radio stations were hesitant to air such a provocative song, "What's Your Fantasy?" became an enormous success -- as did, to a lesser extent, its even more provocative remix featuring Foxy Brown and Trina -- opening the door for countless other truly "dirty" Dirty South songs that would soon become the norm rather than the exception. Following his initial breakthrough with "What's Your Fantasy?," Ludacris remained ubiquitous. He toured the States with OutKast and released a flurry of successive hit singles: the Neptunes-produced "Southern Hospitality," the Timbaland-produced "Phat Rabbit," the Nate Dogg collabo "Area Codes," the Timbaland-produced "Rollout (My Business)," the Organized Noize-produced "Saturday (Oooh Oooh!)," the KLC-produced "Move Bitch." His second album for Def Jam, Word of Mouf (2001), peaked at number three on the Billboard album chart in October and hovered at the top of the charts for a long time. Furthermore, he contributed to hits for other artists during this same time, most notably Missy Elliott's "One Minute Man" and Jermaine Dupri's "Welcome to Atlanta," and also released another album, Golden Grain (2002), which featured his Disturbing tha Peace posse. The proper Ludacris follow-up, Chicken -N- Beer, was released in October 2003. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide LIL WAYNE Initially known best as the youngest Hot Boy, Lil Wayne grew up quickly and enjoyed a steady stream of hits in the process. The New Orleans rapper began his long stint with Cash Money as part of the Hot Boys, a popular late-'90s supergroup also comprised of Juvenile, Turk, and B.G. that set the stage for respective solo careers. Juvenile and B.G. made their solo debuts first in 1999 and racked up a pair of simultaneous big hits, "Back That Azz Up" and "Bling Bling," respectively. Lil Wayne made his solo debut later that year and similarly came out of the gate with a huge hit, the title track of his album, Tha Block Is Hot (1999). Following this wave of astounding success in 1999, the Cash Money frenzy simmered a little bit thereafter. During the two years between Lil Wayne's second album, Lights Out (2000), and his third, 500 Degreez (2002), Cash Money consequently purged itself of Hot Boys, dropping Juvenile, B.G., and Turk while retaining only Lil Wayne. The label's loyalty paid off, as 500 Degreez sold massively, driven by the single "Way of Life." Tha Carter was released two years later, powered by the hit single "Go DJ." ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide AFROMAN Born Joseph Foreman, Afroman may be the first artist to achieve a worldwide hit with the assistance of the Internet. Citing his influences as Too Short, Big Daddy Kane, and 2 Live Crew, he began his rap career in the eighth grade when he started making homemade tapes of his own songs and passing them out to his classmates. He got his start as a performer at church where he played drums and eventually moved on to playing guitar. For a while, he used to work as a baggage handler at an airport while trying to make an impression with his songs. He was still living in East Palmdale, Los Angeles, when in November 1999 Afroman released his first album, Sell Your Dope, and played parties, sidewalks, and contests. Not finding L.A. to his liking, he moved to Hattiesburg, MS, where he teamed up with drummer Jody Stallone and keyboardist/bassist Daryl Havard. In the spring of 2000 he concocted his second LP, Because I Got High, with producer Tim Ramenofsky. He distributed it at shows and with the help of T-Bone Records in Hattiesburg. The more people he performed for, the more word of mouth spread, with not just a little help from the Internet's controversial music-file swapping service, Napster. Someone who got his hands on his music at a show posted the track "Because I Got High" to Napster and suddenly everything changed for Afroman. Then Howard Stern's radio show boosted "Because I Got High"'s popularity by playing the song on his show. The song "Because I Got High" was based on Afroman's inability to clean up his room. The song lists a number of activities -- cleaning his room, going to court, attending class -- that get derailed because of "reefer madness." Afroman eventually also gained the attention of Universal Records, who signed him to a six-album deal. His first Universal album, The Good Times, was a compilation of his first two LPs and a few new ones. "Because I Got High" was also included on the soundtrack to Kevin Smith's film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. "Because I Got High" became a huge hit around the world in the last quarter of 2001. When he returned in 2004, he did so in a big way, with the double-disc Afroholic...the Even Better Times, albeit he did so independently. Free of Universal, he wrote, produced, and recorded Afroholic on his own, marketed it largely via the Internet (www.afromanmusic.com), and toured with a live band. ~ Ed Nimmervoll, All Music Guide 2PAC Tupac Shakur grew up around nothing but self-delusion. His mother, Alice Faye Williams, thought she was a "revolutionary." She called herself "Afeni Shakur" and associated with members of the ill-fated Black Panther Party, a movement that wanted to feed school kids breakfast and earn civil rights for African Americans. During her youth she dropped out of high school, partied with North Carolina gang members, then moved to Brooklyn: After an affair with one of Malcolm X's bodyguards, she became political. When the mostly white United Federation of Teachers went on strike in 1968, she crossed the picket line and taught the children herself. After this she joined a New York chapter of the Black Panther Party and fell in with an organizer named Lumumba. She took to ranting about killing "the pigs" and overthrowing the government, which eventually led to her arrest and that of twenty comrades for conspiring to set off a race war. Pregnant, she made bail and told her husband, Lummuba, it wasn't his child. Behind his back she had been carrying on with Legs (a small-time associate of Harlem drug baron Nicky Barnes) and Billy Garland (a member of the Party). Lumumba immediately divorced fer. Things went downhill for Afeni: Bail revoked, she was imprisoned in the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village. In her cell she patted her belly and said, "This is my prince. He is going to save the black nation." By the time Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, Afeni had already defended herself in court and been acquitted on 156 counts. Living in the Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and tried to raise her son to respect the value of an education. From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For misbehaving, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. But she had no answer when he asked about his daddy. "She just told me, 'I don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'. It was just some rough times."When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa, was born. This child's father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few months before her birth, had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal armored car robbery. With Mutulu away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was distressed. "I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere. I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with." As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt "unmanly," he said. Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate face. "I don't know. I just didn't feel hard. I could do all the things my mother could give me, but she couldn't give me nothing else." The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love songs and poetry. "I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that book I said I was going to be famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting was an escape from his dismal life. He was good at it, eager to leave his crummy family behind. "The reason why I could get into acting was because it takes nothin' to get out of who I am and go into somebody else." His mother enrolled him in the 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group in the impoverished Harlem section of Manhattan, where he landed his first role at age twelve, that of Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. "I lay on a couch and played sleep for the first scene. Then I woke up and I was the only person onstage. I can remeber thinking, "This is the best shit in the world!" That got me real high. I was gettin' a secret: This is what my cousins can't do." In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing lyrics, walking with a swagger, and milking his background in New York for all it was worth. People in small towns feared the Big Apple's reputation; he called himself MC New York and made people think he was a tough guy. He enrolled in the illustrious Balitomore School for the Arts, where he studied acting and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch" with himself. "Them white kids had things we never seen," he said. "That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said: They was devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot. I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist. By the time he was twenty, Shakur had been arrested eight times, even serving eight months in prison after being convicted of sexual abuse. In addition, he was the subject of two wrongful-death lawsuits, one involving a six-year-old boy who was killed after getting caught in gang-war crossfire between Shakur's gang and a rival group. In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie Humphrey, a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based rappers to create Digital Underground, a band intent on massive bass beats and frenetic, Parliament-Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the group released its debut and best album, Sex Packets, a pulsating testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic tracks, "Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991, D.U. released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat Syndrome, all on Tommy Boy Records. In 1992, Shakur entered a most fruitful five-year period. He broke free of D.U. and made his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, a gangsta rap document that put him in the notorious, high-speed lane to stardom. That same year he starred in Juice, an acclaimed low-budget film about gangs which saw some Hollywood success. In 1993, he recorded and released Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., an album that found Shakur crossing over to the pop charts. Unfortunately, he also found himself on police blotters, when allegations of a violent attack on an off-duty police officer and sexual misconduct arose. The same year, Shakur played a single father and Janet Jackson's love interest in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice. In November of 1994, he was shot five times during a robbery in which thieves made off with $40,000 worth of his jewelry. Shakur miraculously recovered from his injuries to produce his most impressive artistic accomplishments, including 1995's Me Against the World, which sold two million copies, and the double-CD All Eyez on Me, which sold nearly three million. As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Shakur was shot (most say suspiciously) and killed after watching a Mike Tyson fight with Death Row Records president Marion "Suge" Knight. Though his death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Shakur himself often said that he expected he'd die by the sword before he reached thirty. Following his passing, Shakur's label released an album, The Don Killuminati, under the pseudonym "Makaveli." The cover depicted Shakur nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy pictures released Gridlock'd, a film in which Shakur played the role of a drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, Gang Related, was released in 1997, and Death Row is said to have several unreleased recordings in the vaults for potential future release. NELLY When Nelly first debuted nationally in summer 2000, he seemed like a novelty, but it quickly became apparent that he was, in fact, an exceptional artist, a rapper with truly universal appeal. He wasn't from the East or West Coast, and wasn't really from the Dirty South, either. Rather, Nelly was from St. Louis, a Midwestern city halfway between Minneapolis and New Orleans. His locale certainly informed his rapping style, which was as much country as urban, and his dialect as well, which was, similarly, as much Southern drawl as Midwestern twang. Plus, Nelly never shied away from a pop-rap approach, embracing a singalong vocal style that made his hooks incredibly catchy. As a result, Nelly became an exceptional rapper capable of crossing all boundaries, from the Dirty South to the TRL crowd and everything in between. His first hit, "Country Grammar (Hot...)," became a summer anthem, and many more hits followed. In particular, his popularity peaked in summer 2002, when he topped seemingly every Billboard chart possible with his Nellyville album and its lead single, "Hot in Herre." Nelly was born Cornell Haynes Jr. in St. Louis, where he encountered the street temptations so synonymous with rap artists. And like so many of his contemporaries, a change in circumstance at a pivotal time in his life may have changed the course of Nelly's life. In his case, when he was a teenager, Nelly was taken away from those streets when his mother moved to nearby suburban University City. It was there that he shifted his attention to playing baseball, storytelling, and writing rhymes. With some high-school friends, Nelly formed the St. Lunatics, who scored a regional hit in 1996 with a self-produced single, "Gimmie What You Got." Frustrated with failed attempts to land a record deal as a group, they collectively decided that Nelly would have a better chance as a single act. The rest of the group could follow with solo albums of their own. The gamble paid off, and soon Nelly caught the attention of Universal, who released his debut album, Country Grammar, in 2000. What distinguished Nelly's take on rap from others was his laid-back delivery, deliberately reflecting the distinctive language and Southern tone of the Midwest. The album featured contributions from the St. Lunatics as well as the Teamsters, Lil' Wayne, and Cedric the Entertainer, and spent seven weeks on top of the U.S. album charts. All along, Nelly's goal was to put his hometown of St. Louis and the St. Lunatics on the hip-hop map. Though Nelly had become a star as a solo artist as planned, he said that he is and always will be a member of the St. Lunatics, a collective that also includes Big Lee, Kyjuan, Murphy Lee, and City Spud. Nelly fulfilled his promise in 2001 with the release of Free City, the debut St. Lunatics album featuring the hit single "Midwest Swing." The following summer Nelly returned with his second album, Nellyville, and lived up to his self-proclaimed "#1" billing. The album topped the Billboard album chart while the Neptunes-produced lead single, "Hot in Herre," remained atop the singles chart. In all, Nelly impressively held the number one spot on ten different Billboard charts the week of Nellyville's release. Few rap artists could boast such numbers, and Nelly surely savored his number one status, particularly after being dismissed as a novelty two summers earlier when he debuted. You could call him a pop-rapper if you liked, but you surely couldn't challenge his number one status. After all, his hit streak continued unabated, with "Iz U" (from his stopgap Derrty Versions remix album) and "Shake Ya Tailfeather" (from the Bad Boys II soundtrack) keeping him in the spotlight while he readied his double-disc Sweatsuit project (following the lead of OutKast and R. Kelly, who had both recently released very successful two-disc sets). The seperately released double album dropped in fall 2004, preceded perfectly by a pair of red-hot singles: "My Place" (a slow jam) and "Flap Your Wings" (a club jam). A stroke of commercial (and to an extent, creative) genius, the superstar-laced project catapulted Nelly back atop the pop-rap world. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide AKON The mere act of surviving on a day to day basis is the foundation from which a true artist builds his craft. Multi-talented newcomer AKON is no exception to this rule. His dynamic debut album, TROUBLE, a collection of stirring songs, creatively reflects the ups and downs of the singer/songwriter/producer's life experiences. A crafty blend of soulful hip-hop, TROUBLE is AKON's vibrant first time tour-de-force. "TROUBLE evolved from the struggles I went through and what I did and am still doing to correct those things," offers AKON, who has had his fair share of adolescent problems with both the legal and school system, as is reflected in his redemption song "Trouble Nobody." "I've got a habit of writing about everything I go through," he explains, "and this album gives a glimpse of where I am now." To understand where AKON is right now is just half the equation. The other half lies in where he came from: this young artist possesses a unique history. A Senegalese African, AKON moved to the United States when he was seven. His family is headed by legendary percussionist and jazz musician Mor Thiam, whose expertise for playing the Djembe, a traditional African drum, has been touted as "unrivaled." Being brought up in an environment that treasures the true artistic value of musicianship and revels in the mastering of instrumental skill has had a momentous affect on AKON. It was AKON's deep rooted love and passion for music, evolving from filial admiration, which allowed him to turn his life around, despite his trouble as a youth residing in New Jersey. AKON began playing several different percussion instruments and eventually embraced hip-hop music and culture, despite his initial disdain for the genre. "When I first heard hip-hop I thought it was rubbish because I didn't understand the concept of people talking over music," AKON recalls, "But as I started growing up, living a little and listening to the lyrics, I realized that I was going through a lot of stuff these rappers were talking about and I could relate." Once hip-hop took over his life, AKON's musical development exploded and he began channeling his energy into writing and producing his own music. Songs such as "Show Out" display how much hip-hop has influenced him. Over the sparsely yet hard hitting groove, "Don't tempt me/'Cuz I'm close to the edge/I'm trying not to lose my head," ring the lyrics that cleverly integrates original school lyrics. At the same time, the song pays homage to hip-hop pioneers all while maintaining its own identity. Meanwhile, his first single "Bananza (Belly Dance)" exhibits another side of the artist. On this song AKON puts forth a feel-good vibe. Singing over a seductive and sensual beat, "Bananza (Belly Dance)," is one of AKON's most irresistible tracks. The song integrates a unique up tempo dance beat with a distinct wind instrumentation floating in the background guaranteed to improve every listener's mood. The reason for this, AKON says, "There are a lot of negative things going on today." "We need to party and just have fun," he continues, "'Bananza...' is a party record. You just go in the club, party and enjoy those beautiful women." However, life does not solely revolve around beautiful women and leisure time and AKON is well aware of this. On the somber, soulful "Ghetto" and the meditative, impressive "Journey," AKON gives listeners an in-depth look into a harsher world, one that is just as gripping as it is chilling. But rather than sensationalize his own drama, AKON transmits, to his audience, the feeling of being a part of his inner circle. AKON's personal appeal and ability to reach a listener is a part of his whole package: a package that includes, most importantly, his distinctive vocals and a relaxed singing style. It is as though he is speaking to you as he sings in a very intimate manner. "When I sing the sound comes from the mood that I am in. These records are coming straight from the heart," AKON divulges. Genuine and honest, AKON's music is a step in a new direction: a trajectory that will lead us on a delightfully fulfilling path. Says AKON, "When I'm on the mic, I'm just giving the listener a part of me." Be prepared to receive it.